Stearns and friends last saw Perhacs at an assisted living facility in San Fernando Valley, California, where she had resided for the past eight years. At some point, Perhacs was discharged under the supervision of her caregivers. The musician and her legal guardians have not returned any of the repeated attempts at contact.
Stearns was Perhacs’ manager from 2013 to 2016, having worked on the release of her 2014 sophomore album The Soul of All Natural Things, and remains a longtime friend. “The most important thing is to make sure that she’s safe and she’s comfortable,” she told Pitchfork over the phone.
Stearns confirmed that she filed a missing persons report with the Los Angeles Police Department on June 6. The police reportedly investigated, but could not relay Perhacs’ status to Stearns or any other of Perhacs’ friends because they’re not legally tied to the musician, be it as family members or a caregiver with power of attorney. (Pitchfork has contacted LAPD about the status of the missing persons report.)
After her debut LP was rediscovered in the 2000s, Perhacs was sampled by everyone from Daft Punk to Nas, and became an unlikely hero for artists like Sufjan Stevens, Joanna Newsom, and Devendra Banhart during the freak-folk movement. Perhacs released her third and most recent album, I’m a Harmony, in 2017. Like with her 2014 album, it featured collaborations with Holter and further pushed the borders of her sound.
AIPROPX is an independent multi-source news index — we track, compare, and connect coverage from across the web into one place you won't find anywhere else.